


Sins of the Father

by notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Parent Tony Stark, Relationship Study, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 18:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20157928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: If he’d only had Morgan to worry about, he wouldn’t have done any of it. He wouldn’t have run the tests-- and if he had, he wouldn’t have showed them to Steve.He was set on refusing his former family’s request, on refusing to give them everything he had and was one more time, until Pepper asked him to do the dishes.He had bubbles up to his elbows and there was water sliding down the picture of him and the kid, the only picture of Peter he could bear to have around.The kid was uncertain in the photo, not used to the spotlight always focused on someone close to Tony Stark, but there was genuine happiness on his face, in his smile.Tony’s fingers twitched on the edge of the sink.(There was water sliding over the kid’s face and that’s when Tony knew he was going to do this.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I should probably preface this by saying that this fic was born as me trying to see how Tony's childhood would have affected him and his parenting.
> 
> As is often the case, it kinda... Just kept going...
> 
> If you enjoy this fic, kudos and comments make me really happy. Hearing from readers who liked my work makes my day.
> 
> Warnings: canonical major character death; there are some references to emotional abuse but it's not graphic.

When Pepper told him, eyes shining with hope and happiness and trepidation, that she was pregnant, he laughed and spun her in a circle and kissed her. 

That night he left her sleeping and sat on a lab bench with his head in his hands.

When Pepper went into labor in a quiet, understaffed hospital seven months after Thanos, Tony couldn’t breath through his anxiety. He held Pep’s hand as she cursed God and him and he was so, so afraid, but he didn’t show it, because Pepper couldn’t know.

\---

(Tony didn’t want to be his father and he was terrified of giving himself the change to be.

Howard Stark had been… Unpleasant. Problematic. If Tony was honest with himself, which he tried not to be, his father had been abusive. 

When his father told him how much his unborn son meant to him already, Tony believed him. 

Howard Stark had always had good intentions, had always cared greatly about what his son became.  
He’d just been a shitty father.)

When an angry, wailing baby was placed in his arms, his fear of becoming his father vanished. It was replaced by fear of what the world could do to this child if he couldn’t make it safe for her.

He could never, ever hurt her.

\---

Morgan is fierce and brilliant and kind and he sees so much of himself in her it scares him all over again. He thinks of everything he’s done to himself, to the world, and he prays that there’s enough of Pep in her to balance his DNA out. Tony teaches his daughter how to build a circuit board, how to do math and how to predict what chemicals will do when mixed, and Pepper teaches her how to read and write and think about consequences.

\---

Tony only makes Morgan cry once.

She was with him in his workshop, as she often was, and he lost track of his surroundings, as he often did. He looked up from rewiring Rhodey’s suit and saw her reaching a chubby hand out for one of his welders.

“Don’t touch that,” he barked, jumping to his feet.

Morgan looked up at him with big, dark eyes. Her lip trembled.

“Honey,” he said helplessly.

She burst into tears and ran into the house.

Pepper came and found Tony after he didn’t come in for dinner. He heard the door open and didn’t turn around.

“Tony,” she said to his back.

He put his mask aside and leaned on the table without responding.

“You scared her, that’s all. She didn’t know you could sound like that. It’s okay.”

“My father scared me too,” he said tonelessly, feeling his hands clench on the edge of the table.

“Tony. Did you want to scare her, or keep her safe?”

He opened his mouth and closes it, for once at a loss for words.

“Yeah,” Pepper said softly. “There’s a difference, Tony. You’re not your father.”

Tony was shaking. She laid a hand on his shoulder. He turned around and let himself fall into her quiet strength. 

He buried his face on Pep’s shoulder, the scent of her hair in his nose, and Tony let himself believe her.

\---

He loved Pepper and he loved the delicately, perfectly balanced life they had.

He loved his daughter. More than life itself, assuming his life meant anything.

He could never quite forget, though, that he had once had a son.


	2. Chapter 2

If he’d only had Morgan to worry about, he wouldn’t have done any of it. He wouldn’t have run the tests-- and if he had, he wouldn’t have showed them to Steve.

He was set on refusing his former family’s request, on refusing to give them everything he had and was one more time, until Pepper asked him to do the dishes.

He had bubbles up to his elbows and there was water sliding down the picture of him and the kid, the only picture of Peter he could bear to have around.

The kid was uncertain in the photo, not used to the spotlight always focused on someone close to Tony Stark, but there was genuine happiness on his face, in his smile.

Tony’s fingers twitched on the edge of the sink.

(There was water sliding over the kid’s face and that’s when Tony knew he was going to do this.)

He was beyond the white-hot rage now. Beyond the anger and fury at Cap, at Strange, at Thanos. 

(At himself.)

He’d thought he’d accepted it all. Moved on, as much as he was ever going to.

But maybe, maybe, he isn’t done with bargaining with death yet.

(And maybe, maybe, he isn’t quite done being angry just yet, either.)

\---

“If you really cared--” the kid said, and Tony felt a pang of something he refuses to identify as he remembers how his father had never been around.

_ This kid. _

Tony had been trying to stay away, to keep Peter out of the fallout of the war Tony had dragged him into, but every time he got another voicemail from Happy Tony had to close his eyes.

_ It’s better this way _ , Tony told himself, and he ignored all the memories of desperately, hopelessly seeking any kind of acknowledgement from his father.

“If you die? I feel like that’s on me,” Tony said, and Tony refused to even contemplate the possibility of how much that would destroy him.

The kid could hate him, as long as he was safe.

“Jesus, I sound like my father,” Tony said, not sure if he was referring to his words or his thoughts, and the throwaway comment echoed in his head as he flew away from Peter’s dejected figure.

_ I sound like my father. _

Logically, he knew things were a little different. Peter was doing stupid things with the help of the suit and Tony needed to make sure the kid knew how irresponsible he was being.

(And Peter wasn’t really his son, not technically, not in the ways that didn’t matter.)

Tony should have told the kid more, yeah. It was also Tony’s fault.

The thing that drove him from beside Pepper to his workshop at two am, though, was the look on Peter's face when Tony had told him “if you’re nothing without the suit then you don’t deserve it.”

Cap’s sneer of _take off that suit and what are you_ went through Tony’s mind. He drowned it out with Metallica.

His father’s tired, dispassionate  _ if not for me than you’d just be damaged goods  _ was harder to shake.

Not quite the same. But close enough that his stomach wanted to heave.

He took Peter’s suit and the kid got trapped under a building and Tony makes Spider-Man a better suit and then a better one and he’s halfway through the fourth design when Pepper gently but firmly reminds him of the invitation and press conference and he let her drag him away from his holographic sketches.

When Peter turned down the Avengers, Tony wasn’t sure why he felt pride as well as disappointment. Rhodey pointed out that Tony had been telling Peter to stay in school and think about things besides being Spider-Man and Peter’s decision was the responsible one.

Tony refused to acknowledge it, because Rhodey would be insufferably smug, but his friend was right.

And then the kid was in a spaceship, and Tony was praying like he hadn’t since Afghanistan, and for once God answered.

Strange saved the kid. Tony thought that maybe the jerk had a few redeeming qualities.

Then. Then.

_ “I don’t feel so good, Mr. Stark.” _

Then…

The ship and Nebula and awkward bonding and he knew he was dying but that was all right, he had given everything he had to trying to save the world and he was done.

Then a glowing woman who was nice but terrifying took them home and the same anger came at the sight of Cap but he said all that mattered first--

_ “I lost the kid.” _

He moved on. Mostly.

And if his heart seized up every time he saw red and blue in the corner of his vision, well.

He’d always been good at rebuilding his heart.


	3. Chapter 3

He pulls up to the compound going way too fast with a flare of bitterness at Steve’s hopeful, unsurprised expression.

_ I’m not here for you, Spangles _ , Tony thinks, and he could almost pretend that was the whole truth.

Clint shows up following Natasha and Tony has to stare for just a moment. He’d heard scattered reports from Rhodey about Ronin’s activities, but somehow seeing the assassin with a tattoo and a mohawk was jarring.

But then, they’ve all changed.

Tony could still kill spiders, before Thanos.

Clint volunteers for the test run like a man with a death wish. He comes back alive and  _ oh, _ Tony thinks vaguely,  _ this might actually work _ .

He thinks about Peter disintegrating in his arms, and as what’s left of the Avengers stand together one last time, Tony swears he’ll do whatever it took to make this insanity work.

\---

He sees Howard Stark and wonders if his father would even care if he knew who Tony really was, Tony knowing what he does now about who Howard will become as a father.

\---

Peter’s alive again, the kid is  _ alive _ and Tony can’t say anything through the relief and disbelief and love lodged in his throat. 

Tony lets Peter’s chatter wash over him with an overwhelming sense of unreality. He can remember he had found it annoying, once, the way Peter was always talking. Now it’s the only sound that matters.

He pulls Peter into the hug he’d been reliving in his flashbacks for five years and this time Peter doesn’t turn to dust in his arms, this time Peter stays warm and solid and  _ alive _ \--

And Tony doesn’t expect to survive this, is amazed he’s lived this long, but with his eyes closed and his face buried in Peter’s dusty, sweaty hair, he wishes desperately for another chance to hug his son.

\---

And then…

Tony picks up the gauntlet. It slides over his hand like it was meant to be there because it was, he designed this suit to wear it.

His biggest regret-- and he has so, so many as the pain sears through him in a blinding flash of light-- is that he can’t have just one more hug like that.

\---

Peter’s crying, saying “We won, Mr. Stark, don’t you know it’s me?”

And Tony tries to smile, tries to say  _ of course we won, Peter, I got you back. And of course I do, kid, I could never forget you. _

_ Be a good brother to Morgan, okay? _


End file.
